How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a life – A Review

Oh well, when I’d first seen the book, just as it was released, I thought it seemed like a pretty neat book. I mean a good idea, probably well written and a good storyline. But I did not purchase it at the time since I already had like 3 books in a queue to read and decided to maybe purchase it after I’d finished those. I guess it was a good decision in hindsight. But the decision to borrow it from a cousin to read it unfortunately wasn’t.

After the plagiarism scandal broke out, I thought I might as well take a look at the book. So borrowed it from a cousin since the book was not available in any book stands due to it being pulled off the shelf because of the scandal. I’ve heard that the book, after the pull out, was selling for about 2-3 times it’s original price on EBay

Anyway, back to the book, I’ll not disclose the story of the book. But I’ll rant about what I disliked in it. Firstly, it does not really portray Indians in a very favorable picture. Now I don’t know any NRIs so I don’t really know how they live and behave. And another thing I did not like is the portrayal of the main characters.. They were, for my taste, far too artificial. The way their behavior is described, I just could not picturise them. Again, maybe US teenagers are like that, maybe they are not. I have no way of knowing that but they just did not suit my taste.

The humor is good in some places, especially the way the parents go about planning the whole charade et all. But it is not enough in my view to justify the entire book sadly :(